Nathan is spending his thirtieth birthday alone in a diner. Alone unless you count the pretty, distracted woman in glasses—the only other patron—sitting several booths down. And he does. Nathan leafs through a menu he knows well, stealing glances as …
Fiction
GOOD LUCK, SWEET ORIENTAL BOY
Before I got lost in that big porno theater on Astoria, my therapist told me how his husband wasn’t really his husband. He said that his husband had been a friend who’d been terminally ill and that his literal dying …
The Bridge Kids
Salamander kneels in the mud puddle. Both knees caked now in the cold mess but he closes his eyes and smiles that big-ass smile. Master Jam’s yellow bat taps each of his shoulders and Salamander says, “I will never betray …
Frog Woman
She stands ankle-deep in the wood chips of the playground at Library Park—merry-go-round, whirlwind seats, the usual. She looks up at the sky, all that gunmetal gray. Then she shouts, HEY YOU MOTHERFUCKERS!
Most of the children were …
The Two Girls
They do not know that girls become teenagers become girls again. That girl, this girl. Charlie, Fatima. Girls who smoke fake cigarettes in attics and then real cigarettes on porches. Girls who cut Barbie hair and then real hair, who …
Reaching for Ijenu
Maria, a woman from my age grade, takes the condolence messages on my behalf, and makes sure that everyone eats kola and has something chilled to drink.
“She is resting.” Her voice confronts someone who must have been making their …
I Know You, Rider
She made the decision to lock him in there, and maybe that wasn’t the right thing to do, but her horse was cast, kicking fervently against the wall of the stable, rolling his black hair against the mulch and craning …
Back
My dad couldn't reach the middle of his back. He waxed every part of his stocky, thick body--and then I hopped in at the end to get the patch between his shoulder blades. It became part of our Sunday afternoon routine.
The Moth-Child
She was a marvel of deformity: bones thin and brittle, organs misshapen, skin with an odd cast of gray. Most shocking, of course, were her wings. Not real wings, the newspaper said, but wing-like abnormalities—things that looked like wings but …
Smoke
Aunt May wanted a cigarette, so I sighed myself up and rolled her oxygen tank away. I knocked it against the door frame on purpose. Then I fell back onto the couch, where I watched the smoke float upward, …
